What Is A Company Culture?

What to look for in a company culture?

When looking for a new job in Software Development often the focus in the hiring process is on the years/months experience with a specific library/framework, be it Java (Spring/Hibernate), JavaScript (ReactJs) or NodeJs (Express).

We may want to take a new job as a transient stepping stone, the quickest way to a pay rise is to change job, a higher salary multiplier needed for a mortgage.

The companies approached are usually the following: bill-able engagement consultancy, tech startup, legacy tech giant, software development boutique, or a corporate business sector gaining capacity for building software.

Individually people are smart with hidden talents, unused and unable to bring to the fore due to established group-think or a status quo. Everyone knows when something is not smart or is useless but have no sense of power to change it.

Productivity does not mean producing continuously the same thing. Equating working 8hrs to producing 8 tonnes of coal. Saying you work 50hrs a week at the office simply means you were present for 50hrs at the office. Time may be better spent on building documentation, learning from or training others.

Viewed as a slow and steady marathon over a rat race, Product Marketing, not Software Development, should be used to get ideas expressed and disseminated quickly. Marketing is education.

Culture is developed through the latitude given to the employees natural tendency to do the right thing. Managers are important bulkheads that shield team members from excessive bureaucracy and meetings.

If a company does not care enough about creating a better working environment what is the chance it cares about creating a better culture?

Environment drives Culture; Culture drives Brand

“As long as workers are crowded into noisy, sterile, disruptive space, it’s not worth improving anything but the workplace.” - Excerpt From: Tom DeMarco. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, Third Edition

References to some companies with intentional values: